Rwandan Refugee Clemantine Wamariya, CIW YOU(th) Share Their Stories at CIW
Approximately 20 Chicago-area youth gathered at the Chicago Ideas Week offices to hear Rwandan genocide survivor and human rights activist Clemantine Wamariya share her life story and to learn more about the CIW YOU(th) program. The youth, who represented a wide swath of Chicago Public high schools, were both current and aspiring CIW YOU(th) Ambassadors.
The theme of the night was storytelling, as Wamariya and CIW YOU(th) Director Rachel Graham urged the group of Chicago Public Schools students to tell others their stories.
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| Clemantine Wamariya shares her personal story with Chicago Public Schools youth. |
“Your story speaks so much for who you are,” Wamariya opened her discussion. Over the next thirty minutes, Wamariya took the students on her personal journey of survivorship. When she was six years old, Wamariya and her 16-year-old sister Claire escaped the Rwandan genocide, hopping from refugee camp to refugee camp across eastern Africa. Eventually, both sisters traveled to the United States, where Wamariya started her formal education, graduating from Yale this fall semester.
Wamariya stressed the importance of her family—her childhood heroes—who helped guide her through this harrowing experience. “Forgiving and loving people is practice,” she told the students. “It’s an everyday practice.”
After her talk, many of the youth related Wamariya’s talk to their own experiences. Harper High School student Joseph Jones asked Wamariya to draw parallels between the violence she witnessed in Rwanda and the violence that Chicago students see in their own neighborhoods.
“It’s a different war,” Clemantine said, adding, “Anywhere you go in the world you will find struggles. Nowhere you will go is safe; nowhere you will be is safe.”
Jones and many of the other current CIW YOU(th) Ambassadors reflected on how their own experiences as Ambassadors helped them reflect on and share the struggles they have faced in life.
“Your story cannot only be relevant to you all,” Jones said he learned of his time in CIW and of his experience as an Edison Talks speaker. “It can be relevant to a lot of other people if you all are willing to share it.”
“Your voices are really powerful,” Graham agreed as she told students that the YOU(th) program would “build a network of youth that can cross neighborhoods.”
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| YOU(th) Director Rachel Graham urges students to help build a powerful network of Chicago youth. |
CIW 2013 YOU(th) Ambassadors will continue to work with CIW through the coming year as the program accepts a new cohort of students who will participate in CIW Talks, Labs and other YOU(th) events. The program provides CPS students a forum for meeting Chicago leaders and businessmen, meet other motivated peers and learn more about how to impact their own communities.
You can view Clemantine Wamariya’s 2012 Edison Talk here:
You can view Clemantine Wamariya’s 2012 Edison Talk here:
